


System Error

by Anna Marie Darkholme (WierdAlienFantasies)



Series: And my heart crumbles to dust, but my body goes on living [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Infinity War Aftermath, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 16:57:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16268486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WierdAlienFantasies/pseuds/Anna%20Marie%20Darkholme
Summary: Nebula is left standing on the ruins of Titan with nothing but dust.Dust and memories.Dust, memories and an awful revelation.





	System Error

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to "Three Words", but can be read and understood without reading that first. With regards to continuity, it runs concurrent to the post credit scene of Avengers: Infinity War.
> 
> Please note: MAJOR spoilers for Infinity War. If you still have yet to see the film, please do not read this work unless you are comfortable with spoilers.

With the only remaining Terran seemingly dead to the world, Nebula is at last alone. In the awful quiet of the ship graveyard on Titan, the only sounds are the soft whirring of her mechanical parts. She slowly turns over the terrible new knowledge in her head. Her father has won, a thought that should incite anger in her. She should be calculating the next assault or fleeing as far and as fast as possible to escape his no doubt imminent wraith. And yet she cannot move. She cannot plan, cannot think clearly at all. Her mind instead is strangely stuck replaying her recent memories.

She sees Mantis, eyes wide in fear. She hears her speak.

“Something is happening.”

Nebula has had threats spat at her in more languages than she knows, a thousand promises of grievous and shameful tortures upon her and all her descendants. And yet nothing has managed to affect her as much as those three words. What little left of her that is still flesh and blood chilled at the statement’s simple finality. And then Mantis was gone in a wave of dust. Drax barely reacted, his face registering only confusion. A single word, uttered as a question, left his lips before they crumbled alongside the rest of him.

“Quill?”

Finally Quill, the insipid fool her sister is ( _was_ the machine part of her corrects) so fond of, half turned. Nebula could make out his face, was strangely held in place by the mixture of regret and concern she saw there.

“Oh man.”

A gust took him too, the ashes scattering across the planet’s dusty surface.

She knows more happened afterwards, that all but one of the Terrans also simply ceased. But despite her training, as ingrained into her as breathing, she did not keep track of what happened. Her attention had been fixed on the piles of dust that had been her sister’s travelling companions.

It should not bother her, the fact that they all just ceased. Now that her sister was… was no longer going to need their presence, her foolish companions should have been of no concern to Nebula. It was not like they were viable allies for her. The female felt too many emotions, a weakness that was always going to catch up with her. The Destroyer could not be trusted, his own quest for vengeance liable to distract him as much as hers distracted her. In any case he had made his opinion of her clear, ever since firing that blaster beam on the Dark Aster. And Quill... with Ego’s destruction, he was no more useful than any Terran male. So frail, so breakable, so full of pointless emotions. He’d have only ever slowed her down.

There was no real reason for her to struggle with processing this. Three potential obstacles to her goal had just been removed. And yet... her mind unbidden pulls up memories.

_Mantis, holding out a Yaro root to her, a smile of all things lighting up her face. When Nebula had stared blankly at her, she’d explained._

_“Your sister told me Yaro root was your favourite. I thought you might like one.”_

_Nebula had snatched it, inspected it for some trap. Was it maybe poisoned? Finding no obvious signs, she’d cautiously taken a bite. It had tasted pleasant. Awkwardly, half under her breath, she’d mumbled gratitude to Mantis. To her surprise, the insectoid girl’s smile had grown wider._

_The Destroyer, sitting beside her on the Milano. It was after she’d dropped by to trade intel with her sister, and before she knew it found herself drawn into her sister’s band’s latest foolish endeavour. It had ended with a drawn out fight with an entire Badoon outpost. In the aftermath of that battle, she and the Destroyer had found themselves cleaning and repairing their weapons together. No words had been spoken, but the silence had been benign. It had been the silence of warriors, an unspoken camaraderie. The Destroyer had reached out, scrap of cloth in hand. Silently, Nebula had accepted it, polished her electric baton with it, then returned it. He had not been quite smiling, but he had seemed truly at peace._

_Quill, arms around her sister. One of his annoying Terran songs, the songs that Nebula would never admit to missing when away from the Milano, had been playing in the background. Together he and Gamora had been moving in a strange pattern, likely some form of ritualised combat. There was no violence in their movements though. As they swayed and spun and held one another close, there was an almost hypnotic quality to it. And the look in their eyes… Nebula had never seen her sister so happy. She had remained in the shadows, watching for several minutes. Neither Quill nor her sister had noticed her, too caught up in each other. It was foolish, but Nebula had felt almost honoured to witness the moment._

 The last memory brought Nebula’s thoughts swirling back to her sister. Unbidden the awful revelation pulled from Thanos’ skull by Mantis returns to her. Thanos had killed Gamora. Gamora who could have fled, could have denied him knowledge of the soulstone, could have _saved herself_. Could have saved herself, but didn’t. Didn’t in order to _save her_. Gamora who had begged Thanos to stop her torture, as she had done years ago when they were newly sisters and Thanos had yet to set them against one another and begin ripping her apart piece by piece. As she had laid there, scattered almost to breaking point, her sister had risked everything _for her_. Her sister had somehow thought _she_ was worth risking everything for.

As Thanos had gripped her shoulder, Gamora’s eyes had met her own one last time. They’d had that softness that she’d once scorned, dismissed as weakness. Now, only now, Nebula finally understands the true strength behind that gaze. The awful weight of that realisation crashes down on her all at once. With a shudder her legs buckle and she falls to her knees. For the first time she understands love, and it is too late. Her sister and all her annoying friends are gone. The gaping hole left by their loss opens up within her, made only wider by the knowledge that they’d never know how she felt because she hadn’t known herself until now.

Pain, worse than after any of Thanos’ surgeries, worse than rebuilding her broken body a thousand times over, wracks her in waves. She does not cry, for tears have been taken from her years ago. That does not stop her from shuddering, the weight of grief threatening to tear her apart. The shudders grow more violent, something building within her. Deep within her DNA, remnants of a people and culture she no longer remembers stir. It is instinct, a unbeatable fact of her biology, that takes over. Her mouth opens, and she lets her grief come pouring out.

 

 

Tony Stark is snapped out of his own grief by a sound that hasn’t been heard in the universe for many years. A haunting sound, at once like a whispering breeze and howling gale force wind, beautifully melodious and gratingly discordant, welcomingly familiar and undeniably alien. It makes his already broken spirit crumble further, such is the loneliness and utter desolation expressed in a way words never could manage. It is the sound of a luphomoid grieving.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece came about as I was researching human emotional responses for a piece of work. Current research suggests some responses, such as laughter, are innate (so genetically programmed). This got me thinking about alien biology. Obviously, for ease of reader/viewer comprehension, aliens in the Marvel Universe express emotions in a anthropogenic manner. It got me thinking though, would they still be programmed to react to those emotions? In the end I didn't go too crazy, but still tried to explore Luphomoid biology a little. It kinda got out of hand and ended up being much sadder than I anticipated (blame the writers for killing Gamora, then turning Mantis Drax Quill and Groot to dust).


End file.
